Conrad's 'Heart of Darkness'

Heart of Darkness is a book that gets a lot of crap. I haven't met anyone else who ever enjoyed reading it, but I think that has more to do with understanding the premise of the book. I couldn't even tell this was written in English by the author as his third language. For one thing, the framing device threw me off.

A seaman on a boat in England tells all the bored passengers a story of when he went to Africa and traveled up the Congo River... that story frames the character Kurtz. Kurtz is a genius who seems to excel at everything he does and was hired to run the inner most station along the Congo River. Marlow, the seaman, hears rumors about Kurtz and slow pieces his character together by talking to people at each station along the river.

The station at the mouth of the river is run efficiently, although cruel to the natives; the accountant says Kurtz is a man of endless possibility and admires his ability to organize. At the next station shows no progress, the manager does shows little emotion and simply maintains the status quo; he acknowledges Kurtz potential and obscene success in the ivory trade and tries to defend his position from being overtaken by Kurtz's proficiency. At the last station, Marlow meets a wondering trader who lives closely with Kurtz. Like the local natives, he has come to worship Kurtz's genius as Godlike.

Kurtz has become cruel without civilization, gaining massive amounts of ivory by setting the native tribes against each other and displaying the heads of 'rebels' all over his compound. However this is ignored by the natives and the trader who conclude that a man so great and wondrous as Kurtz can no longer be judged as other men. The deathly ill Kurtz is carried back to the ship for transport for health care and Marlow finally has a chance to talk with and evaluate Kurtz first hand; something he spends most of the book anticipating as he gathered bits of Kurtz's legendary capacity. I don't want to spoil the ending, but it's a one; I like it more as I continue to think about it.